Harley Davidson demands concessions because it can!

Jack Norman, the research director for the Institute for Wisconsin's Future and a former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel economics reporter, asks:

Was Harley forced by market conditions to demand enormous cuts in jobs, wages and benefits? Or was it a deliberate strategy to take advantage of the economic crisis?

His answers suggest that many large corporations are using the threat to relocate to secure significant labor cost reductions not because the market requires them, but because they can.

Norman's analysis is linked here.

It's the recession (not combined reporting) stupid!

Jack Norman's Crossroads' column is a well documented repudiation of the Republican assertion that combined reporting is causing Wisconsin to lose jobs.

As Norman points out combined reporting is nothing more than legislation that closed a loophole used by profitable corporations to hid their profits and avoid Wisconsin taxes.

Norman writes that the worst recession since the Great Depression is causing Wisconsin to lose jobs.

One could add to the culprits the lack of an industrial policy, a commitment to "free trade"and China's policy of pegging the value of the renminbi against the value of the United States dollar.

It is worth the read.